/m/history

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For those who also are interested about both the on-field and off the field experiences of the early days of the game economically and otherwise, I would recommend reading either of the two biographies I have seen about John Montgomery Ward, since his career encompassed about everything you could think of:

-being a star pitcher
-dealing with arm injuries
-switching to shortstop as a result of the injuries
-dealing with insane egomaniacal owners
-being a labor organizer
-being an attorney and essentially one of the early player "agents"
-being on the ownership/management side of things and having to deal with players

He walked in the shoes of pretty much every viewpoint you could think during the early days of the game. It's fascinating reading in my opinion.

For those who also are interested about both the on-field and off the field experiences of the early days of the game economically and otherwise, I would recommend reading either of the two biographies I have seen about John Montgomery Ward, since his career encompassed about everything you could think of:

-being a star pitcher
-dealing with arm injuries
-switching to shortstop as a result of the injuries
-dealing with insane egomaniacal owners
-being a labor organizer
-being an attorney and essentially one of the early player "agents"
-being on the ownership/management side of things and having to deal with players

He walked in the shoes of pretty much every viewpoint you could think during the early days of the game. It's fascinating reading in my opinion.

The strike hit my fandom when I was 12 years old and my boyhood hero Frank Thomas, having one of the 20 greatest offensive seasons of all time, didn't get to finish what he started. That didn't kill me off. It was 18 freaking years ago. Time heals all wounds and all that.

That was actually the good thing about the strike, it happened my junior year of high school, so the ensuing years were going to spent focused on boobs, not baseball anyway. Better to just check out for a few seasons.

so the ensuing years were going to spent focused on boobs, not baseball anyway.

With John Kruk, you coulda had both.

I do know some people who were very much into baseball in the 80s and 90s, lost interest after the '94-'95 strike, and never regained it.

No doubt although obviously people give up baseball all the time for all sorts of reasons. Probably more left in the wake of the 94-95 strike than in any other year but it was obviously only a small part of the audience anyway.

12-year-olds aside, anybody who lost their baseball innocence in the 94 strike wasn't paying attention. I will grant you I still find it hard to believe the owners were committed enough to stupidity to require cancellation of the series but there ya go.

For those who also are interested about both the on-field and off the field experiences of the early days of the game economically and otherwise, I would recommend reading either of the two biographies I have seen about John Montgomery Ward

Baseball is one of the very few things where, every now and then, I watch it and can, for a fleeting moment, feel magic again. That moment is more and more fleeting every year, but it's still there. Moreover, it's still there for my 79 year old father.

I didn't RTFA but I hope there is something in the author's life that brings a little magic now and again. Otherwise, he's just another ####### cynic and, well, we can all do that well enough we don't need to pay someone to do it.

You know what I’m talking about: the old, romantic idea that baseball should be played for the love of the game; that it’s America’s pastime; all of that idealistic, cheesy stuff. Call me cynical, but I just don’t see that in the game anymore. And the only way for me to not dismiss it altogether is to watch movies about baseball.

With this, it strikes me that Moss is wanting to use one of the editing/excising functions of film (getting rid of things he finds unpleasant) to excise facts about baseball he was ignorant of as a child. Certain movies return him to a faux innocence (it was ignorance, really; an absence of information). Adult baseball players always had to think about money. The owners of fields always had to think about paying the mortgage.

People can play for love of the game while also needing to get paid. Moss's feeling that that complexity is somehow painful suggests he has some growing up to do.